Technology to the Rescue

Livestock producers are fully aware of the ‘big pain’ building in their cost accounting ledger. Feed prices, especially corn, keep escalating. On August 2, Chicago Board of Trade had September 12 futures for corn hovering around $8; September soybeans at $16.35. Chicago Mercantile meat futures were trading at $76.85 for October 12 hogs; cattle at $140.12.

The dilemma? Processors can’t ramp up prices enough to offset increasing production costs of producers without significant resistance from consumers. In essence, increasing meat prices at the retail counter inevitably generates shrinking sales. Rationing is setting in at all levels of the food chain, including pork producers.

Unfortunately no one has the ‘inside intelligence’ to predict how long the belt tightening will last, nor how severe the pain will become. So how do you survive the current squeeze, especially when it continues with such hour-by-hour volatility? Well, after you have answered the question: “How many of my barns will continue to have pigs in them?”, you need to reduce mortalities and improve feed efficiency.

EPI Air to the rescue? Murphy-Brown, LLC thinks so. Their results were solid. They tested EPI technology on 44,000 nursery pigs. Check these rather remarkable results:

Average daily gain increased 12.2%

Average weights increased by 9.3%

Mortalities were reduced by 26.1%

Workers in these Murphy-Brown facilities also appreciate the ‘cleaner air’ environment.

Here’s why: The EPI barns had a 55% reduction in ammonia versus the control barns; a 58.6% reduction in hydrogen sulfide.

Comments John Baumgartner, BEI President, “My question to pork producers is simply this: Is an investment that returns your money within 18 months a good investment? Murphy-Brown estimated their payback at half of that, 9 months. And that was before the drought. In today’s ‘crunch time’ economy with increased feed costs, those return-on-investment (ROI) calculations are even faster.”

Said Dr. Steve Pollmann, President, Murphy-Brown Western Division, “This is a significant step change in environmental systems. We’re excited. The science is sound. The take away is that EPI in our test runs provided documented evidence of the potential benefit of this technology.”

Sums up Baumgartner, “We think EPI technology is on the threshold of becoming ‘must have’ technology. Especially during these difficult times, improved performance is the key to sustainability and a quick ROI has always made business sense.”